Is the Tenere 700 REALLY better than the NEW KLR650? Comparison

[Music] so when you're shopping for a new adventure motorcycle or any motorcycle for that matter there's two main criteria that you're looking at one is it going to meet the needs of your specific situation for how you like to ride and number two can you afford it is it going to fit within your budget a lot of people have been asking me is yamaha's 10 or a 700 worth 50 percent more in price than kawasaki's brand new for 2022 updated klr 650. both of these bikes will take you to the same amazing destinations they'll get you down the trail they'll get you down the highway and you're still going to make the same great memories no matter which machine you choose so the question is how do you decide if the yamaha is worth the extra money and what are some of the advantages that the klr might actually have despite it being cheaper here's the short answer between these two motorcycles while they're both amazing bikes and they both will take you to amazing places the yamaha is a higher quality higher performing bike however there are three advantages that the klr has that not a lot of people are talking about the first obviously being the price you can buy one and a half of these bikes for the price of the yamaha the second advantage that the klr has is the fuel range with a six gallon tank this bike can go 300 miles between fuel stops as opposed to the yamaha with its 4.2 gallon tin can only go about 200 miles the third advantage that the kawasaki has is the comfort it has a more comfortable seat it has a better fairing and windshield it also has an adjustable windshield the ergonomics are a little bit better and it's just a little bit more comfortable for riding all day than yamaha's tenor a700 although don't get me wrong the yamaha is still a very comfortable machine because kawasaki's klr is so much more affordable than yamaha's tenera 700 and it's ready to go out of the box with the big fairy and windshield the comfortable seat the long fuel range and some pretty affordable oem accessories like luggage and these extra lights you see here a lot of people will be able to take this off the showroom floor and pay cash or finance it for a very very low monthly payment as opposed to having to invest a bit more and think more about that decision financially versus getting yamaha's 10 700 simply put the kawasaki is going to allow more beginner adventure riders or more people coming from outside the sport to enter into the field of adventure riding and i think that's a great thing so those three factors i mentioned are really the only ways that the klr is better has more functionality specifically than the yamaha does so now we need to talk about why the yamaha is worth more money and all the ways that the yamaha is a superior machine there are three main factors i want to talk about with the yamaha and how it's better than the kawasaki the first is going to be the engine the second is going to be the chassis meaning the suspension and the brakes and handling and the third is going to be the quality so let's talk about engines for a minute so on the kawasaki klr what you get is a single cylinder liquid cooled engine the same engine they've been using since around 1987 with a few small revisions for 2022 including fuel injection the bike puts out around 40 horsepower and around 40 foot pounds of torque and being a single it has quite a bit of vibes quite a bit of vibrations that come through to the rider although rubber mounting the bars and the pegs was a nice improvement for the 2022 model the klr despite having a good amount of torque to get you over different trails and over different types of terrain on the highway it's very very slow for a motorcycle it's dog slow and if you're coming from uh pretty much any twin cylinder bike or any modern motorcycle the klr is going to feel pretty pretty slow to you so if you're looking to get excitement out of an engine you want to feel some excitement of acceleration the klr is not going to deliver that the klr's for somebody looking for a lot of utility the ability to explore bad roads but it's never going to excite you in the engine department the engine on yamaha's t7 is a whole different story so the yamaha is using their cp2 parallel twin engine it makes around 70 horsepower it sounds absolutely incredible especially with an aftermarket exhaust it's very very smooth it has almost no vibration the spread of power and torque is very linear it works well off-road and it works well on road and yamaha did a great job because this little engine is the perfect matchup in an adventure bike chassis [Music] so if engine character if ends and acceleration is important to you and the smoothness of a twin cylinder engine then that's kind of a game-changing feature that this bike has over the klr and there's just no way that you can make the klr perform like this so let's talk about the chassis meaning the suspension and the brakes and how the bike handles so let's start off with the klr the weakness of the klr compared to the omaha is the suspension and the brakes are just not up to par with the yamaha and here's why the klr uses a single front disc with an old-fashioned twin piston caliper and in the rear uses a single disc and a twin piston caliper the rear brake is fine but the front braking power is just not very competitive for modern motorcycles and if you're coming off riding other modern motorcycles you're going to have to readjust to the lower power of the klr's brakes let's talk about the suspension that's probably the most important thing people are thinking about so the klr has a very plush very comfortable suspension it absorbs potholes very well and when you ride on the trail you really don't feel any of the little rocks and the chatter and the washboard it does a very good job of soaking up those small imperfections but the counter argument to that and the counter side of that is that it's extremely extremely soft and if you hit any sort of dip or rut or if you start riding a little bit above a relaxed pace even at a moderate pace the bike starts to wallow and bottom out very very quickly and i've bottomed this suspension more times than i can remember and i've only had this bike for a couple weeks the klr suspension is also very limited in its adjustments you have a front fork with no adjustments whatsoever and and the rear suspension they do at least give you a preload with five settings for pre-load if you have a passenger or extra cargo and they give you adjustable rebound damping which does have an effect but that's it for the adjustments let's talk about the suspension on the yamaha so with the yamaha you get fully adjustable suspension front and back it's not a world-class suspension and no it's not as good as the suspension on ktm 790 and 890s however it does have full adjustments so on the front you have compression and rebound damping adjustments although there's no preload which is kind of a bummer on the back you have preload rebound and compression damping adjustments but maybe the biggest difference between these two suspensions besides the adjustability is the fact that when you ride the yamaha a bit more aggressively and you start picking up your speed the motorcycle the chassis doesn't just simply fall apart and turn to mush the klr feels like you're riding on like pillows uh and it's just constantly hitting the bump stops whereas the yamaha although it's not the best suspension in the world it can keep up with how most adventure riders are going to ride on the trail when you start pushing the pace going through water bars going through dips riding more aggressively the suspension can keep up with the rest of the chassis and it can keep up with you as a rider and it provides a more controlled more enjoyable experience that's something that's going to be hard to replicate on the klr without spending a lot of money on aftermarket suspension so i mentioned we're going to talk about quality of construction so let's cover that now so the klr as everyone knows if you've done some research on the internet and talked to writers out there in the community the klr suffers from some issues with its reputation around quality and certain issues that it has now the good news is that for 2022 they've made some improvements not only have they brought the bike a little bit more into the modern world with the fuel injection and the better dashboard the adjustable windshield they have paid attention to some details and made the quality a bit better for instance the fasteners are no longer phillips heads made of cheese that strip out they're all hex head allen key fasteners the batteries easier to get to they've made things a bit easier to access and things just seem to be one level up in quality now unfortunately the klr still suffers from a lot of its long-standing engineering and design flaws and while some people still argue a little bit about this it's pretty well accepted that the klr suffers from a few major issues and unfortunately they're still here with us with the 2022 model the first thing is something called the doohickey i have another video on the doohickey which i'll link here it's essentially the system that tensions the counterbalancer chain inside the engine and it's not designed properly and it can lead to reliability issues down the line the second thing is oil consumption klr's because of the way that the piston rings are designed and i have a video coming on this really soon so stay tuned they tend to consume oil above 5000 rpm and there are many documented cases of riders even riders that i personally know myself who have blown up the engines by running them out of oil because they went on the freeway for a few hours at a time maybe a couple times in a row between gas stops they didn't look at the oil window the bike got low on oil and the engine was destroyed and in my opinion it's unacceptable for a modern motorcycle or a modern vehicle to use that quantity of oil that could result in an engine failure over that short of a mileage time frame so i don't think that's okay the third thing that the klr is kind of known for which is a smaller thing is that it doesn't have very good temperature regulation so unlike most modern cars and motorcycles it doesn't have a thermostat bypass what that means is that the bike runs at very inconsistent temperatures as the thermostat opens and closes it tends to run too cold and results over the long term in a premature engine wear which none of us want to have so a lot of people put on something called the thermobob to correct that the other typical klr things are still true with this bike there's still reports even on this new model of side panels coming off on the highway because the bolts vibrated loose fairings rattling a lot of the journalists and the press intro had paddling fairings because something wasn't fitting correctly but keep in mind when thinking about those things that this is a budget motorcycle for sixty seven hundred dollars for the capability you get there's nothing like this so we probably shouldn't complain too much about those smaller issues now yes it's true that you can address those issues on the klr and have a very reliable bike but on the flip side let's discuss some of the engineering flaws and major known issues with yamaha's tenera 700 actually there is one small thing i wanted to mention about the tenerate compared to the klr and something i recently found out the 10 array has a little bit higher center of gravity and it's actually a little bit harder to lift up so if you were to drop both of these bikes even though they weigh about the same if they're configured the same the ten array is significantly harder to lift and i'm not sure exactly why that is other than maybe it carries more of its weight up high now you certainly wouldn't know that when you ride it because when you ride the motorcycle this bike feels less top-heavy than the klr but for some reason when you're parked and when you're picking the motorcycle up if you drop it the 10 array is a little bit harder to pick up so anyway your mileage may vary on that but that's something i wanted to mention what about maintenance requirements a lot of people have been telling me to put more maintenance information in my video so here you go oil changes air filters chain maintenance those are going to be roughly the same on both of these bikes in terms of the difficulty and the time required to do it but there is one difference yamaha quotes a valve inspection interval of 25 000 miles on the tenere and kawasaki is saying 15 000 miles for the klr reliability and longevity is a very tough thing to discuss it's a tough thing to measure and quantify because everybody has their stories everybody has their anecdotes so it's something that i really try not to rate in my videos but if i have to make an assumption here i think that because the yamaha is better quality it's lower stressed twin cylinder engine and lack of inherent design flaws is going to mean that for the average rider the 10a is probably going to hold up better in the long run at higher mileage that's not to say that a klr can't achieve high mileages and be reliable but it's going to need more tinkering and more preventative fixes done along the way to make that possible so in summary yes yamaha's tender 700 is a better overall motorcycle than kawasaki's updated klr 650 but then again it should be because it costs 50 percent more however like i said at the beginning kawasaki's klr will absolutely take you to the same destinations make the same great memories of adventure trips that yamaha's 10 or 8 700 will so if your priority is simply to have the most exploration the most adventure you can for your dollar and stretch your dollar as far as you can then kawasaki has you covered if you're looking for a little bit more performance and quality in your adventure bike and your adventure riding then yamaha has you covered with their t7 so if you'd like my parting words of advice on this comparison here's my two cents i think you should buy whichever bike fits into your budget if the klr fits into your budget and the yamaha doesn't be happy with your choice of the klr now that being said if the yamaha fits within your budget i would recommend spending the extra money for the yamaha again if you're financially comfortable with that and here's the reason why i think that it's less likely that you're going to outgrow the yamaha here's what i mean the suspension and the power of the yamaha and the overall quality i think it's going to keep you entertained and keep you satisfied as you grow in your adventure riding your skills and your experience compared to the klr the klr will get the job done it'll take you where you want to go but it's more of an upgrade path it's more of an entry point as opposed to something you're going to keep for a long time although there are writers who keep their klr for a very long time and they're very very happy and there's nothing wrong with that so i hope this was useful i hope this was educational please let me know what you'd like to see in terms of future videos i have some really interesting rankings coming out with adventure bikes i've developed a whole scoring system i'm going to be releasing that soon so please subscribe and hit the bell please leave a we just had an earthquake that was really weird i could feel it outside that's not good when you could feel the earthquake outside i'm in california so we get these anyway what was i saying please hit subscribe and hit the bell uh please consider being a patreon supporter leave a comment in all the videos hit the thumbs up button and thanks again for watching ride safe and we'll see you in a few days [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Big Rock Moto

Views: 59,243

Rating: 4.952487 out of 5

Keywords: motorcycle, adv bikes, dual sport bikes, adventure bike, big rock media, big rock outdoors, klr650, klr, kawasaki klr, kawasaki klr650, 2022 klr650, new klr, yamaha tenere 700, tenere 700, t7, tenere vs klr, klr vs tenere, t7 vs klr650, klr650 or tenere 700

Id: RFli17h2m14

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021